Yemeni army soldiers, backed by fighters from allied Popular Committees, have shot dead 19 Saudi troops and pro-Saudi militiamen loyal to resigned Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi in the kingdom’s southwestern border region of Najran.

An unnamed military source told Yemen’s official news agency SABA that Yemeni forces shot and killed five Saudi troops in the al-Asha and al-Shorfa areas of the region, located 969 kilometers south of the capital, Riyadh, on Tuesday.

Yemeni soldiers and Popular Committees fighters launched two rockets against Saudi army outposts in the Rajla, al-Sadid and Lesser al-Makhrouq areas of the same Saudi region. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Later, Yemeni soldiers and their allies fired a barrage of artillery rounds at the al-Karas military base, leaving scores of Saudi soldiers dead and injured.

Separately, several Saudi soldiers lost their lives or sustained injuries when Yemeni forces targeted a gathering of Saudi troopers in al-Sharqan military base.

Additionally, five Saudi-sponsored militiamen were fatally shot in different districts of Yemen’s southwestern province of Ta’izz.

Yemeni soldiers and their allies also struck the position of Hadi loyalists east of Kahboub region in the same Yemeni province, killing two of them.

In Yemen’s central province of Ma’rib, army forces and fighters from Popular Committees launched a number of artillery rounds in the Wadi al-Ziq area of Sirwah district, killing and wounding a number of them.

Yemeni snipers also shot and killed seven Saudi mercenaries in different parts of Ma’rib province.

A Yemeni man looks at the damage in the aftermath of a Saudi airstrike on Yemen Today television network in the capital Sana’a on December 9, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

Saudi Arabia has been incessantly pounding Yemen since March 2015 in an attempt to crush the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement and reinstate Hadi, a staunch ally of the Riyadh regime.

More than 12,000 people have been killed since the onset of the campaign more than two and a half years ago. Much of the Arabian Peninsula country’s infrastructure, including hospitals, schools and factories, has been reduced to rubble due to the war.

The Saudi-led war has also triggered a deadly cholera epidemic across Yemen.

According to the World Health Organization’s latest count, the cholera outbreak has killed 2,167 people since the end of April and is suspected to have infected 841,906.

On November 26, the United Nations children’s agency (UNICEF) said that more than 11 million children in Yemen were in acute need of aid, stressing that it was estimated that every 10 minutes a child died of a preventable disease there.

Additionally, the UN has described the current level of hunger in Yemen as “unprecedented,” emphasizing that 17 million people are now food insecure in the country.

It added that 6.8 million, meaning almost one in four people, do not have enough food and rely entirely on external assistance.

A recent survey showed that almost one third of families had gaps in their diets, and hardly ever consumed foods like pulses, vegetables, fruit, dairy products or meat.

More than 3 million pregnant and nursing women and children under 5 also need support to prevent or cure malnutrition.